Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 16

2AA DAYTON DAILY NEWS MILLENNIUM FRIDAY. DECEMBER 31, 1999 THOUSAND YEARS: PEOPLE The 1 0OOs Important, influential people define millennium 1 ML I 1 1 1- J. A she balances the checkbook, so who am I to argue? Seriously, Curie was a pioneer in the understanding of radioactivity and winner of two Nobel Prizes (physics and chemistry) who paid the ultimate price for her research by dying of leukemia. She begs the question: How does a woman rise to the very top of the scientific world at a time when it was dominated almost exclusively by men? I'll bet she would have never whined about the math section on the SAT exam. Albert Einstein (1879-1955): Perhaps the most original thinker of this or any millennium, driven by the conviction that the Creator has designed a.

universe of such exquisite elegance that, its basic laws can and should be grasped by the human mind. He gave us curved space, time as the fourth dimension, the equivalency of mass and energy and the Manhattan Project. And let's not forget a whole generation of kids with bad haircuts. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963): Granddaddy of the expanded consciousness movement, cream of the golden-age Hollywood screenwriters (Pride and Prejudice) and author of the language's most underrated masterpiece (Point, Counterpoint). Decades before either became trendy, he plunged himself into Eastern religion and experimented with mind-altering drugs.

On his death bed, he recanted many of his unorthodox ways and said his biggest regret was "not treating people with more kindness." Paul Robeson (1898-1976): Never in a thousand years has one man possessed so many extraordinary talents with so few opportunities to express them. The son of a former slave turned preacher, he was a double threat at Rutgers: first in his graduating class and a football All-American. He rejected the pros to study law at Columbia, but soon discovered the legal profession of his day had no place for a brilliant black man. He drifted to the stage and later film, where his acting ability and superb bass-baritone voice propelled him at last to fame. In the 1950s, he was ostracized to Europe for his left-wing views, then returned to this country in ill health in 1963.

Simone De Beauvoir (1908-1986): Philosopher-writeri aiand mother of the feminist movement (The Second Sex, 1949) as well as the first author to reveal how modern Western society relegates the aged to the scrap heap (The Coming of Age, 1970). A brilliant, strong-minded woman with incredibly prescient sensibilities. So how did she end up a love slave to that Sartre creep anyway? CONTACT Jim DeBrosse at 225-2437 or by e-mail at jimdebrossecoxohio.com ALBERT EINSTEIN gave us curved space, time as the fourth dimension, the Manhattan Project. of equivalency of mass and energy and the techno-geek, he loved wine, women and song 'and was an accomplished artist and musician. The cogency and wit of his scientific writing (The Starry Messenger) makes for a good read even today.

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): He was stubborn, quick-tempered and demanding (he once landed in a sword fight after calling one of his students "a nanny-goat and his music was considered old-fashioned even by his contemporaries. But no one has ever made so much consistently inspired, endlessly surprising music. If aliens ever visit this planet, his work may be the only thing they take back with them. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855): As the father of existentialist philosophy, his work has been trivialized by Sartre, Camus and lesser minds who tried to follow.

He tackled the rationalists of his day and cleared the ground for faith by arguing that none of us can escape making ethical choices and accepting life's consequences. And he lived by what he wrote. Falling in love with a younger, innocent girl he decided could never understand him, he took the rap for the break-up of their engagement and never married. Marie Curie (1867-1934): My wife insisted on this one, and Early 1000s: A series of roads is built by American Indians to connect towns in and around what is now Chaco Canyon, N.M. Built by clearing rubble, the roads sometimes have paved surfaces and curbs.

Some are 30 feet wide and often completely straight, sometimes scaling cliff faces with stairways cut into the rock. 1 000: Inhabitants of Easter Island begin erecting stones. Heroic poem, Beowulf, is written in Old English. Christianity reaches Iceland and Greenland. Spiritual center of Judaism switches from Mesopotamia to Spain.

Maya civilization in Yucatan peninsula is at its climax. Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red, reportedly discovers America (Nova Scotia). Indian mathematician, Sridhara, recognizes the importance of the zero. The Chinese perfect their gunpowder invention made of charcoal, sulfur and potassium nitrate. 1 000-1 050: Stormy lakes of East Africa inspire fishermen around Lake Victoria (the largest lake in Africa) to develop double-ended canoes with no prow or stern powered by up to 20 seated paddlers.

1 000-1 050: In the era of Song China, where women's work was needed less than in the countryside, foot-binding (the wrapping of young girls' feet with cloth bandages to keep them small) is introduced. 1 004: Japanese scribe Murasaki Shikibu pens The Tale ofGenji, considered to be the first novel. 1 006-1 007: The most spectacular example of funerary towers, popular in Iran during the 11th and 12th centuries, is the 167-foot-high Gunbad-i Qabus in northeastern Iran, built of brick in a star-shaped design. 1027: William the Conqueror is born. 1 040: Duncan of Scotland is murdered by Macbeth, who becomes king.

1 04 1 -1 048: Bi Sheng devises earliest movable type for printing in China. The clay characters are reusable but the method is painstaking. 1 042: Pope Urban II, whose call for a Christian war to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims in 1095 sets off the Crusades, is born. 1 046: Reform Papacy begins. 1 050: Arabs bring deciminal system to Spain.

Cahokia, with a population of about 10,000, is the largest of the towns in the Mississippi Valley in central North America. In the southwest, Chaco Canyon pueblos reach their peak before declining in the mid-12th century. 1 054: Beginning of schism between Roman and Eastern Orthodox Churches. 1 057: Macbeth is murdered by Malcolm. 1 066: Duke William of Normandy, with only a few thousand troops behind him, crosses the English Channel in an attempt to become ruler of England.

He succeeds, the last time any foreign invasion of England has been successful. Appearance of comet, later called Halley's comet. 1 086: Chinese scientist Shen Kua gives account of magnetic compass for navigation. 1 095-1 099: First Crusade. I Contributors Editors: Ann Hoffman Pat Thomas, Ron Rollins, Ken Canfield Copy editor: Anthony Shoemaker Art director: Ted Pitts Writer: Ben Kline, Meredith Moss, James Cummings, Kevin Lamb, Jim DeBrosse, Ann Heller, Kathy Jesse, Carol Simmons, Terry Morris, John Keilman, Laura Dempsey, Gary Nuhn Photo: Eddie Roberts, Charlie Steinbrunner, Linda Warren, Jennifer Leedy, Jim Fidler Research: Bob Allaire, Jason Hilton Newspapers In Education: S3ndy Eichhorn-Hilt Einstein, Bach, Galileo, Michelangelo among the most notable By Jim DeBrosse Dayton Daily News When an editor assigns you a story on the 10 most fascinating influentialimportant people of the past millennium, you as a reporter can do one of two things: research and agonize over your choices for the duration of the next millennium, or just wing it As a modern, efficient journalist who knows how to meet a deadline, I've chosen the latter.

Deciding who's fascinating and who isn't, of course, is about the most subjective process I can think of, other than choosing a spouse, and we all know how that can turn out. So, to spare the deconstruction-ists out there the chore of dissecting my cultural-ethnic-religious biases, let me say upfront I am a white male, age 47, Roman Catholic by faith and French-German by ancestry. "Secondly, let me say who will not make my list and why. It will not include people who are certifiably and indisputably evil, and therefore in my opinion, boring and very unfascinating. You won't find Hitler, Stalin, Torquemada, Robespierre or Jack the Ripper on my list, and that goes double for the two punks who shot up Columbine High School.

I've tried to select people who are not only important and influential, but whose talents, strength of character or beliefs raised them high above the ordinary, toiling mass of humanity. These are the people that, if I ever make it to heaven, I plan to sit down with in a celestial pub and share a cold one and a long, long conversation. St. Francis of Assist (1181-1226): To say he founded an order of nuns and monks that drew thousands of followers and helped reform the Catholic Church profoundly understates the charisma of the man. The son of a cloth merchant, he rejected everything material and comforting for a life of poverty, contemplation and service to the poor.

He considered all creatures a mirror of God, loved all that was real and true, including his own illness and approaching death, which he dubbed his "sisters." Probably no one in history ever carried out so literally Christ's work in Christ's own way. Michelangelo (1475-1564): Sculptor, painter, architect and poet who exerted unrivaled influence on the development of Western art. Only the esthetically impaired can stand before the statue of David or look up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and not be moved. A technical perfectionist who dissected bodies to Students list Top 10 people who shaped the world over the last millennium, according to 130 seventh grade Social Studies students from Springboro Junior High School. 1.

Martin Luther King Jr. 2. Adolf Hitler 3. Wright Brothers 4. Mother Teresa 5.

Princess Diana 6. Thomas Edison 7. Harriet Tubman 8. Neil Armstrong 9. Christopher Columbus 10.

Abraham Lincoln Neil Armstrong Reader list By Kim Lee, Joni Sines, Gary Sines Neil Armstrong Henry Ford Alexander G. Bell Mother Teresa Martin Luther King Jr. Wright brothers John F. Kennedy Thomas Edison Einstein Abraham Lincoln WW 1 Aldous Huxley charm. Not only did he invent the experimental method and the astronomical telescope, he took on the pope and the entire earth-centric gestalt of his times by daring to argue that the planets revolved around the sun, and spent the last eight years of his life imprisoned for it.

Far from being a Mohandas Gandhi i -4, '(h A I I ir nr. 1 a A 1 i -l I llll II J.S. Bach 1. better understand their underlying structure. But more than that, everything he painted, sculpted or designed is infused with the highest ideals of the human spirit.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642): Newton may have tallied more discoveries but he can't match the G-man for guts, versatility or Reader list By Judith Vargo 1. Wright brothers (inventors of easy, cheap world travel, inadvertent architects of world homogenization) 2. Enrico Fermi (formulated the first sustained nuclear fission chain reaction) 3. Karl Marx (father of socialism. Even though he did not live in this century, his ideas did not come to fruition until its early decades and profoundly influenced 20th century life for its entire span) 4.

Adolf Hitler (father of WWII in which 50 million people died and much of Europe was destroyed) 5. Tommy Flowers (creator of the first programmable computer) 6. Franklin Roosevelt (architect of the world's recovery from the Great Depression) 7. Winston Churchill (The de facto architect of the Allied defense in WWII) 8. Mao Tse-Tung (architect of Chinese society and government) 9.

Josef Stalin (architect of Soviet oppression and totalitarianism) 10. Mohandas Gandhi (intiator of the fall of European dominion in Asia) I I -f 8 Runners-up Thousands of other candidates were dying to make our list of 10 Most Fascinating People of the Millennium. Some interesting also-rans include: Vincent Van Gogh: For changing forever the way we look at line and color. T.S. Eliot: For bringing English poetry back from the dead.

Jules Verne: For predicting just about every modern invention you can name, with the exception of the Epilady. Isaac Newton: For locking himself up in a room one year and inventing calculus. Marilyn Monroe: For embodying the eternal feminine against the anorexic wasteland of our times. -Jim DeBrosse Marilyn Monroe i DAYTON'S WRICHJ BROTHERS' invention of powered flights one of the millennium's greatest inventions..